


I'll Take Care of You

by aingeal



Series: Taking Care [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst doesn't begin to describe it, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, Hurt No Comfort, I don't know how to even begin to tag this, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Self-Harm, Self-Mutilation, Steve on Bucky violence, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, Suicide by Superhero?, There aren't enough warnings in the world, catws, seriously don't read this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-12
Updated: 2015-04-12
Packaged: 2018-03-22 12:32:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3729076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aingeal/pseuds/aingeal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky is unable to cope with having been the Winter Soldier. He doesn't want to live any more. But Steve is never going to leave him, even at the end. </p><p>Read those tags again and proceed at your own risk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Take Care of You

**Author's Note:**

> Title from ["Take Care"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q97s4H1jYqk) by Beach House

He’d found so many knives. They were all over him, tucked into boot and sleeve, snug in a holster, a sheath on his belt, and he pulled them out one by one and laid them out. He’d taken out the little round rolling grenades and set them to one side. He pulled the small handgun from between his shoulder blades and the pair of pistols from his thigh holsters, and taken out the spare ammo from where it was strapped to his chest. He laid the guns and the bullets to one side. He removed his leather strappings, the holsters, and then the armor beneath. Then he’d tried to remove his arm. He dug his fingers in at the seam where it met his shoulder, grunting, trying to pop it off like a bottle cap, like it was just a scab incidentally attached to him, or a loose tooth, meant to be removed, harnessed only by weak sinew. The arm was not like any of those things. Prying his fingers against the edge only made his fingers bleed. He picked at the edge, flaying, scrabbling, taking up layers of skin, but the connection was muscle deep, and the incidental wounds did nothing to loosen it.

Then he’d taken his strongest knife, the stubby one that looked like a file, and he did with the knife what he’d first tried with his fingers. It made him think of the time he'd stabbed someone else in the shoulder, shot him in the leg and stomach. He screamed as he dug into his flesh with the knife, trying to find the place where the metal began and sever the tether, but there was nothing he could do. The knife rent his flesh and chipped up against the metal, but it could not sever their bond. The arm was fused so deeply in his shoulder that he would have had to carve into his chest to remove it that way. He considered plunging the knife into his flesh beneath his collarbone and carving it out, but he knew he would meet his heart and lungs if he did that, and he would die before he could manage to remove the arm. He didn’t want to die with the arm attached.

Instead he wiped the blood off the knife like a file and took it to the arm. He braced his hand and stabbed the knife into his palm. Sparks flew, and the plates rippled, automatically repulsing this invading threat. The knife popped out from between the plates. He tried again. The arm whirred and smoked as he ground the knife in hard, fighting its programmed defenses. He grunted as the whole arm bucked, wrenching his chest, and began to beep like a computer going into system failure. The metal fingers tried to close around the knife, but he kept going, and he could feel the crunch of the plates giving way to the wiring and pistons underneath, and the knife met them and ground on, crushing the delicate mechanisms that powered the movements of the arm, let him wield a knife and pull a trigger and wire a bomb with it. The mechanisms that made him a killing machine. He stabbed harder and harder, pulling the knife out and plunging it back in, because the arm had given up the fight now, and he could wreck the machine that used to be his palm and chip off the moving plates, and he did, until he realized he had cut through it entirely and was trying to stab the knife through the concrete floor beneath the vinyl. Bits of wire with frizzy copper ends sprouted from entrance and exit wound, occasionally sparking. Metal plates and rubber insulating parts littered the shredded vinyl on the floor. It was nothing like blood.

He tried to move the arm, but it wouldn’t move. The connections between it and his brain were severed. It was just a sickening dead weight now, that he had to lift and wield with his other arm. It felt like a parasite, sucking on his shoulder, weighing almost as much as the rest of his whole body. It hung loose and pulled him to one side when he stood up. There was no pain, apart from now where the dead weight tugged at the muscles connecting it to his shoulder. He should have done the other thing, should have carved it off at the root like he meant to, got rid of it completely. He wouldn’t be content until he saw that metal arm lying disembodied on the ground, no longer part of him. But at least, now, it wasn’t something he could use anymore, wasn’t a part of his mind as well as his body. And the weight felt good, felt right, felt like a punishment. He could not get rid of the arm, but he could no longer use it either, and he would wear it like an albatross. It would never let him forget what he’d done. He didn’t want to forget. He wanted justice. He should be made to suffer, he should be put to death. But no-one was here to kill him, and he couldn’t kill himself, not just yet. It would have been easy if the arm had still worked, he could have placed his metal hand around his human throat and the fingers would have squeezed until he was dead, if he wanted them to. Too late now, but this was better. It was better if he suffered first before he died.

He looked at his knives. He took his favorite, slender and slightly rounded, perfectly balanced, a knife that had killed many times. He took his knife and he placed it to his ribs and he ripped it horizontally. Nothing happened. Then blood began to swell in beads. It wasn’t enough, he hadn’t done it hard enough. A fucking coward who could not take his punishment. He did it again, harder, and this time the blood came quickly, and spilled down his side in a hot fast flow. He felt it trickle into his waistband. It didn’t hurt at all. He looked at the cut. It gaped slightly, with parted edges showing the pinkish layers of flesh beneath. It bled a lot. The blood looked good. He did it again, across his solar plexus, a longer cut and a slower one, not slashing quickly but really cutting, drawing the knife slowly, feeling the pain of his skin tearing beneath the blade. That was _it._ What he needed, what he deserved. He did it again, in the softer flesh above his navel. That hurt even more. He did it again, and again. He removed his trousers, which were now soaked in blood. He looked at his dusky curled genitals in their nest of hair. He hadn’t seen them in years. They looked innocent. He spared them. 

But his legs were culpable, were strong and mighty, had carried him boldly towards murder. He cut them too, tearing his thighs to ribbons. He could do it easily now, each cut feeling like a note in a perfect piece of music. He was following a pattern that felt right and pure, and he knew what was to come next. He deeply scored the soles of his feet, his toes curling and cramping in protest, and that made him scream in pain for the first time. He nicked his way up his ankles and all the way up his calves. He ran a single deep vertical line up each shin. He slit the backs of his knees.

Then he screamed again, a curse word in Russian, because he had been so FUCKING STUPID. What came next in the pattern was his arm, his bicep elbow wrist, but he’d disabled his metal left hand. He couldn’t wield the knife in his right hand against his own right arm. He looked helplessly at the repulsive smooth whiteness of the skin of his inner arm, and he couldn’t not desecrate it. He placed the knife between his teeth and angled his head and raised his arm and by moving his head and arm together, he could just about slice at his wrist. It wasn’t nearly enough. It just left little scratches that barely bled. He screamed again and churned his body and felt all the wounds on it move and gape and bleed, and everything was sticky with blood. The scream echoed in the silent room. He screamed and screamed until his throat went silent and could only wheeze. Then, disgusted with his failure, he took up the little knife like a file and stabbed into his left thigh, deep deep in the muscle. It stood up and out of him like a handle. It hurt like being stabbed hurts. He knew that pain. It hurt so badly. Blood oozed round the knife. He didn’t pull it out. He laid his head down and looked at it. The blood on the floor matted his hair. His eyes lost focus. Dark blood streamed hotly over his thigh and onto the vinyl floor, spreading out and thickening across the room. Pain throbbed like a flame in every single cut, pain thundered in his leg. There was nothing but pain and blood. That was how it should be. His eyes rolled back and he laid there naked in the pool of blood and felt it, floating in the pain, but before he blacked out tears flowed down his face because he realised that not even this pain was enough for what he had done.

The wreckage of the metal arm fizzled and beeped, on and off, all night long.

He’d lost so much blood that even the paramedics came close to vomiting.

He woke up in a hospital bed with the metal arm supported across his torso in a sling.

He was on a drip. His body was concealed beneath a papery gown, but he could see the white gauze beneath it. They were healing him. He roared in anger and wrenched his arm to try and remove the IV line, but his arm was strapped to the side of the bed. And he was handcuffed to it. He screamed in fear. He thought Hydra had him again. The NYPD officer outside yelled for a nurse, and a nurse came and gave him a shot of sedative and administered some morphine. He slipped back under.

He woke again to men standing on either side of him, arguing with each other over his body. One of the men was him. Rogers. Rogers was yelling at the other man, who was wearing a suit. Rogers was saying, “Look at him, don’t you think he’s suffered enough? They brainwashed him! The prosecution wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.” The man in the suit shook his head and said, “Unless we go for by reasons of insanity, I don’t know.”

He was not insane. He groaned and moved his dry tongue, and the men looked down at him, startled. He hissed hoarsely, painfully, “Not insane. It was me. I killed them.” He found his voice. “ME. I DID. I DID IT. I KILLED THEM ALL. KILL ME KILL ME KILL ME I DESERVE TO DIE,” and he beat his arm against the railings, rattling the handcuffs, and banged his head on the pillow. Rogers had his fist in his mouth and tears on his face, staring at him in brokenhearted dismay, and the man in the suit looked deeply perturbed. A nurse came in and he screamed as she gave him more drugs. He wanted to feel everything, didn’t want a sedative. He had no choice.

He woke for the third time at night. He was on his side. His wrist was sore from being held up for so long. Other than that there was no pain. It was dark. There was a chair next to him. Rogers was in it. Rogers was in the chair, sleeping. He went under again.

Rogers took him out to a rental house on the coast upstate. They had a garden leading back to the dunes. He sat in the chair on the back porch and watched the sea birds. Rogers sat with him. Rogers looked at him funny. They didn’t speak. He looked back out over the dunes. He was just waiting to gather the strength to swim out to sea and never come back, or swallow bleach, or run onto a highway. He was too weak to walk right now. But that didn’t mean he’d stop trying. Rogers called him Bucky and held his hand and cried. He thought of the name. He had no name for himself. He wasn’t Bucky. He called himself Bucky anyway.

At night Rogers carried him inside like he was a little child and made him lie on a bed pushed up to the wall, and got in after him so he was trapped. He was too weak to fight, though he wanted to. He didn’t want Rogers anywhere near him. He didn’t want to be trapped. Rogers slept heavily and he slept too, despite himself.

In the morning Rogers examined the metal arm, the hole in the palm, the join. He hefted its weight. He let Rogers do it. Rogers said, “Tony could fix this.”

Then he jumped back in fright as the man who used to be his bright and shining Bucky screamed wordlessly in his face and punched himself in the head and screamed “NEVER NEVER NEVER DON’T SAY THAT.” He was crying again, but he reached and took Bucky's hand away from his head and held it firmly in his lap and said,

“Don’t do that my love. It’s ok. No-one will fix it if you don’t want to. Please just don’t do that.”

Bucky wailed “Never never never never,” over and over again, but weakly, and he let Rogers stop him from punching himself in the head.

After a while they could walk on the beach. Bucky insisted on not wearing the sling, so he had to carry the metal arm with his other hand or else let it make him list to the left and limp under the strain. Rogers tried to carry it for him, once, but Bucky punched him when he touched it. Rogers staggered under the blow, holding his hand to his cheek, which would swell and bruise from the impact of Bucky’s fist. Bucky fell in the sand and punched himself in the head and the groin and the thighs in remorse and punishment, and Rogers kneeled next to him and begged him to stop and cried. Bucky screamed and screamed and walked back towards the house alone, screaming, beating himself, and left Rogers crying in the sand. Rogers ran over the dunes to catch up with him before he got there though; Rogers never left him alone for a single minute. Rogers was scared of finding him with a broken bottle in the bathtub or a pair of trousers as a noose. Rogers didn’t let him shave and didn’t shave himself, didn’t keep razors in the house. Rogers made all the food, slicing the vegetables with a pocketknife he kept in his jeans. Bucky had never gone so long without a knife in his hand.

They saw the rest of the afternoon out together in the living room. Rogers lay on the couch with his hands pillowing his head and his knees drawn up. Bucky sat in the armchair slumped over with his hair in his face. Occasionally he whispered, “I’m so sorry.” Rogers would nod, or sometimes shh him, or sometimes cry. It got dark. Rogers finally said,

“This has to stop.”

Bucky said, “What.” It wasn’t a question.

Rogers said, “Bucky it has to stop. Where does it end?”

Bucky spat, “You know where it ends.”

Rogers didn’t cry. He looked him in the eyes with fury, almost hatred, and he said, “Fuck you, how can you keep doing this to yourself?”

Bucky said, “Because no-one else will do it for me. Let me do it, Steve.” This was the first time he’d called him Steve. “No-one’s making you be here. Leave me. Let me.”

Steve said, “Let you? Let you be alone so you can maim yourself until you bleed to death? You think I can do that again? You want to do that to me again?”

Bucky snapped the retort, “I’m not doing it to _you_. You choose to be here.”

Steve laughed harshly and whispered something under his breath which sounded like _selfish._

Bucky heard the word and leapt up immediately. His face had gone abruptly purple and twisted from pain and furious self-righteousness. He dragged Steve off the couch and pinned him to the ground and tried to get his hand into his jeans pocket, to get at the pocketknife he knew was in there. He would get that knife and stab himself in the heart because he was selfish, he knew how selfish he was, even Steve knew, and he deserved to die. Steve was fighting him. Steve had two working arms and was so much healthier and stronger. Steve grabbed his wrist and bent it back and away from his waist. Bucky’s mind was straining, out of force of habit and long training, against his will, to make the metal arm work. He could have disemboweled Steve with that arm once upon a time. Now it was useless, which was good, but fuck he could have used it now. It would be ok to use it against himself. Steve wouldn’t have stood a chance. Bucky would have got the knife and stuck it in himself before he could stop him, if he’d had that arm.

Steve got his legs round one of Bucky’s and with the leverage of his grip on his wrist, flipped him and pinned him in turn, brutally, winding him. Steve straddled Bucky round the hips, trapping his metal arm and his body between his strong thighs. He pinned his arm by his head with one hand and with the other drew out the knife and flicked it open with his big thumb. Bucky’s eyes bulged, fixating on the short shining blade. Just long enough to slip between his ribs and into his pounding heart and still it forever. He licked his lips and met Steve’s gaze, which was the darkest blue and most ferocious he’d ever seen it.

“You want to hurt yourself with this?” Steve demanded, brandishing the knife in Bucky’s face. Bucky arched his back and tugged against Steve’s grip on his arm and grunted, straining for that blade.

“Yes, Steve, please let me have it, just let me have it and go,” he babbled. 

Steve watched the wreckage of his Bucky gagging to be allowed to die. He didn't think his heart would ever heal from this. 

Steve grimaced and very carefully laid the blade against Bucky’s neck, flat to his throat, next to his jugular. He angled the blade just enough so that the sharp edge touched against Bucky’s skin. Bucky went still and his mouth pulled down at the corners and his eyes filled with tears and his head spun. Would Steve, could Steve— really? Really do this? His pulse leapt up to the stainless steel, eager to be spilled. He wasn’t scared. He realized that this was what he wanted most in all the world.

“You’re not going to hurt yourself anymore,” Steve said. “You’ve done enough to yourself. Let me take care of you.”

Did Steve really mean—? Take _care_ of him? Like, take him out? Put him down? Fuck. Bucky’s eyes rolled and he made a strangled sound. His head tipped to expose his neck further. The knife itched so frustratingly against his throat. He wanted it to bite in and send his blood spurting across the room.

“If you want to die, I’ll help you.”

Bucky bared his teeth and through them hissed “Yes,” spittle flying.

“I’d do anything for you.”

Bucky emitted a sick gurgle, rolled his body, begging him. His eyes were screwed shut and his pulse flared pinkyellow behind his eyelids with every crazed beat, and he counted them, praying each one would finally be the last. They pounded like he’d just sprinted a mile. “Steve,” he breathed. “Please Steve.”

Seconds rolled by, measured by the ragged judder of his heart. He waited for Steve to kill him.

Steve said, “Just know that if I kill you I’ll kill myself next. I can’t live a single minute without you.” His hand was as steady on the blade as his gaze was on Bucky’s face. He saw the terrifying desperation there. Steve’s brow was smooth, but his lips were tight. His pulse showed in his temple. His hand on Bucky’s wrist was soaking wet, and his tshirt was stained. His chest heaved with his deep steady breathing. He would never have guessed that he had it in him to do this. He’d never felt so grounded in his body, so alive. He pictured drawing his wrist down and along. He pictured slitting Bucky’s throat. The blood, the death-gurgle, Bucky going still. Would his face be calm, in peace at last, or would it still wear this sickening grimace that told of his longing for death? Would Steve lie down next to his warm corpse and kiss him like a Shakespearian hero, tasting death on his lover’s lips, before gently sliding the knife into his own heart?

Bucky choked, “That’s not fair. You don’t mean it. You can’t.” Steve shook his head gravely.

“I mean it, Bucky. My love, I would do anything you asked. But that’s my condition. Do you really want to ask me?”

Bucky said nothing. They were still in the stalemate and seconds stretched to minutes, while each of their hearts pounded faster and faster like clockwork winding itself up to burst. A drop of sweat fell, perfectly, slowly, from Steve’s face to Bucky’s. They were still.

 

The End.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to go live in a hole forever now, Goodbye.


End file.
